The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (34944) Gunner Felix Louis Bloch, 6th Field Artillery Brigade, AIF, First World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Gerard Pratt, the story for this day was on (34944) Gunner Felix Louis Bloch, 6th Field Artillery Brigade, AIF, First World War.

34944 Gunner Felix Louis Bloch, 6th Field Artillery Brigade, AIF
KIA 17 August 1918
Story delivered 17 August 2018


Today we remember and pay tribute to Gunner Felix Louis Bloch.

Felix Bloch was born in 1897, the son of Mark and Rose Bloch from the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Raised in the Jewish faith, Felix attended school at Queens College where he was involved in school cadets as part of the Universal Service Scheme. He went on to study electrical engineering at the Working Men’s College of Melbourne and paraded part time with the 34th Fortress Company Engineers at Fort Nepean and Fort Queenscliff.

Felix was eager to follow his older brother Harry into the artillery, and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in January 1917, several weeks after his 19th birthday. After a period of training at the military camp at Maribyrnong, where he trained as a signaller, Felix sailed for England with a reinforcement group for the Field Artillery Brigade in March 1918. He carried out further training on the Salisbury Plain near Wiltshire before embarking for the fighting on the Western Front. He was posted to 106th (Howitzer) Battery, 6th Field Artillery Brigade, which was making its way south from Belgium in April 1918.

Felix had joined the battery in one of the war’s most critical periods. Less than two weeks earlier, German troops launched a massive offensive that succeeded in breaking the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. They overran the British and French positions on the Somme, striking towards the major logistical and support hub of Amiens. Australian troops were in Belgium when the offensive began, but were rushed south to help defend the city. After Felix joined the 106th Battery, its 4.5-inch Howitzers established positions outside the village of Ribemont where they fired on German targets over the following weeks. As a signaller, Felix would have received fire missions and other messages from brigade headquarters by telegraph, and relayed them onto the men feeding the guns.

The German offensive was blunted and Amiens remained in Allied hands, but the operations that followed prepared the British and Dominion forces in launching their own counter-offensive. After further fighting around Villers-Bretonneux and Hamel, the guns of the 6th Field Artillery Brigade were in action during the Battle of Amiens on the 8th of August and participated in the advance that followed. Laying down bombardments to support the advancing infantry, the brigade dug in outside the village of Rosieres where they continued to fire. Although the enemy was close to defeat, their own guns remained active, and frequently shelled the Australian artillery lines.

Such was the case on the morning of 17 August 1918, when German guns bombarded the positions occupied by 106th Battery. According to an eyewitness, Felix was in a dugout with five other signallers that took a direct hit from a high explosive shell. All six men were killed instantly. Felix was buried nearby and later reinterred at the nearby Heath Cemetery. A small epitaph by his grieving father appears on his headstone: “To live in the hearts of those we love is not to die”.

Felix Bloch was 20 years old.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died while serving in the First World War.
This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Gunner Felix Louis Bloch, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section